The Devil's Paintbox (13 page)

“Hyah!” Silent Wolf snarled. Then he dropped his bow, loosened the arrow and turned away, muttering something that sounded like curses. Aiden heard a rustling sound behind him and turned to see a small wooden hoop wobble to the ground a few yards behind him.

“Oh—hello!” Tupic called lightly as he snatched up the hoop. “I wondered where you are!” He was oblivious to Aiden's stone-frozen terror. He shouted something to his cousin, then crouched down and rolled the hoop toward him. Silent Wolf raised his bow and shot cleanly through it. Smoothly he pulled another arrow from his quiver and shot
again, getting two more arrows through before the fourth one missed and the hoop toppled over. Tupic shouted what sounded like taunts and challenges to his cousin. Silent Wolf ran and picked up the hoop. Tupic fitted an arrow to his bow while Silent Wolf spun the hoop and Tupic took his turn, missing completely.

It was a
game,
Aiden realized, his heart still pounding, as the two men ran and feinted, shot and challenged each other for a few fast rounds. Tupic was a terrible shot, and Silent Wolf teased him mercilessly. Finally they paused, breathless. Aiden's panic had turned to anger now. Silent Wolf had almost killed him and they didn't even care! He saw Clever Crow watching silently, sitting on the bluff nearby. Aiden couldn't tell whether the old man had seen his fear or not.

Maybe they really hadn't noticed him sleeping in the grass. Or maybe they simply enjoyed giving him a scare. But what if they really did mean to kill him? That didn't make a lot of sense, since they had done nothing but help him so far, but all his life he had heard stories of Indian treachery.

Silent Wolf ran up to Aiden and held out the bow.

“You now,” he said.

Aiden hesitated. Maybe they wanted him to take the bow so they wouldn't have to kill an unarmed man.

“Go on! It's a child's game!” Tupic urged. “We know you will be a bad shot.”

Aiden's hands were still shaking as he took the bow.

“Child's game,” Silent Wolf repeated stiffly, twirling the hoop on one finger, still with a decidedly unfriendly glower.

“All right.” Aiden took the bow. If they were toying with him, well, he could toy with them as well. “I'll try.” He tested the bow. It was a little longer than his own, and stiffer, but not so different. “Go ahead.” He nodded to Silent Wolf. The man rolled the hoop, slowly, as if for a child. Aiden made a show of taking careful aim, then let the arrow pop out of the bowstring. The three Indians laughed.

“Try again!” Tupic grabbed up the target. This time Aiden shot the arrow, but deliberately aimed wide of the rolling hoop. Quickly he pulled another arrow out of the quiver and, making a big show of closing his eyes and looking away, got a “lucky” shot clean through. The Indians cheered.

“Good, Wet Pony!” Clever Crow called. “You Indian now!” He smacked his fist against his chest. Aiden knew they were teasing him, but suddenly he didn't mind.

“Can I try again?” he asked. “I bet I can do it faster.”

“Oh—you want to bet?” Tupic said. “Nimipu are very fond of bets.” He quickly translated to Clever Crow and Silent Wolf, who responded with hoots of encouragement.

“Yes, yes!” Clever Crow shouted. “What you bet?”

“I don't know.”

“Horse?”

“A horse? I don't have a horse.”

“Sisters?” Clever Crow said. “Soon Tupic need wife!” They all laughed at that.

“I don't have anything, really,” Aiden replied, starting to feel awkward.

Silent Wolf said something to Tupic.

“You bet your firstborn child,” Tupic translated solemnly. “Against five ponies born from his horse.”

Aiden stared at them. They all looked very serious. He swallowed. Clearly his use of the word “bet” was much more casual than the Nez Perces’.

“Well I—I don't know. …”

Then Tupic laughed and smacked him on the shoulder. “You are easy to joke on, Wet Pony!”

Aiden felt the familiar rush of anger at being mocked. He lifted the bow up to his chest.

“Throw it!” he shouted. Tupic spun the hoop as hard as he could. Aiden took aim and shot straight through the target, then quickly shot two more arrows clean through as the hoop rolled along the bumpy ground. The three Indians stared in amazement, then looked at each other, knowing they had been conned.

“You should have bet,” Tupic said. “You would be rich in horses!” He ran off to gather the arrows. A cool breeze blew up from the river, and Silent Wolf, his back to Aiden, lifted his hair to cool his neck. I could shoot him easily now, Aiden thought, the bow ready in his hand. But then he felt the last twinges of anger melt away. It was only a game. Why had he never thought about Indians playing games?

Clever Crow watched from the hillside while the three younger men ran and shot some more, until they were sweating and panting. When they were tired of shooting, they wrestled. After proving himself with the bow, Aiden felt confident as he faced off against Silent Wolf. He'd certainly had enough brawls with his brothers. But time after time he found himself flat on his back, without even noticing where the other man had grabbed him. It was like being knocked over by wind.

“Watch here”—Tupic tapped his chest—”not arms and legs. Moving comes from center.”

“I'll watch here,” Aiden laughed, and sat down, breathing hard. “Let me see your center.” Though Silent Wolf was bigger than his cousin, and a far more experienced warrior, Tupic easily held his own. He was faster and more nimble. Mostly he had an uncanny talent for anticipating Silent Wolf's attack and turning it against him. Soon all three were covered in dust and bits of grass, and they ran into the shallow river to cool off. Aiden couldn't remember having played like this since he was five years old.

“Now we have great hunger,” Tupic said. “And the time is good to hunt for our dinner.”

They walked along the riverbank, searching for signs that indicated where animals came to drink. Aiden didn't see any signs or anything different about the place Silent Wolf chose to wait, but soon after they lay down in the grass, two prong-horn appeared at the top of a nearby rise. They were beautiful animals, with soft white bellies and tawny brown backs. They had short horns, delicate faces and big brown eyes that made them look exotic and wise. Some people said they were a kind of antelope, others a sort of goat; some thought they could be something in between. Aiden only knew they were incredibly fast, easily spooked and very difficult to shoot.

The two creatures sniffed the air and walked gracefully down to the water. Silent Wolf, moving so slowly he did not even stir the grass, knelt and drew his bow. His arrow went so cleanly through that the animal fell with hardly a sound. It was almost two seconds before the other pronghorn noticed them and darted away.

They built a roaring fire with the abundant driftwood, and the Indians made quick work of the butchering, efficiently slicing every bit of meat from the bone. Tupic carried up some smooth stones from the river and put them in the fire to heat. They skewered strips of the tenderloin on green sticks and grilled those first. The meat cooked quickly, and they sprinkled it with coarse salt and ate it hungrily, the warm juice running down their faces. Next Silent Wolf sliced the liver and laid the pieces out to cook on the hot rocks. They sizzled and sputtered and tasted delicious.

“Do you hunt for all your food?” Aiden asked. “Do you grow anything?”

“We hunt, we fish,” Tupic explained, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. “We move with the seasons for the spring berries or the camas root.”

“Do you not have a home, then?”

“We have a homeland, and some families by tradition go to some places for the different seasons, but we don't own the land or build houses like you do.”

“What do you live in?” Aiden asked. “Tepees?”

“For the camps in summer, we make homes of poles and reed mats, or buffalo skins—what you call tepees. For winter homes, some dig out the hillside, some build a big lodge for many families to share, maybe thirty or sixty people. We live many different ways.”

Silent Wolf scraped out a narrow trench in the ground on the downwind side of the fire and raked the coals into it.

“We dry the rest of the meat to carry,” Tupic explained. He used a stick to drill a line of holes in the ground along the edges of the trench. Then they cut the remaining meat into thin strips, threaded those onto green sticks and
propped the sticks in the holes, angled like fishing poles so that the meat would cook but the sticks wouldn't burn. Then the men all lay around the fire with full bellies, listening to the chirps and twitters and croaks of the prairie as evening fell.

ow you must tell us your stories,” Tupic said.

“What kind of stories?” Aiden asked.

“Good ones, I hope!”

Aiden felt nervous. He had read lots of books, but they weren't stories to tell around a campfire. He couldn't very well tell
Romeo and Juliet
or
Pride and Prejudice.

“I don't think I have any.”

“Everyone has stories.”

“Tell me one of yours so I will know what you like.”

“I like anything I haven't heard a hundred times before!”

“Do you know Aesop's fables?” Aiden asked with sudden inspiration.

“No.”

“You didn't read them in your school?”

“No. Only Bible stories.”

Aiden felt much more confident now; with Aesop he had a full quiver.

“Here's one,” he said. “A magnificent buck goes to a pond to drink. There he sees his reflection in the water and admires himself. He thinks he is great-looking! His chest is strong, and his antlers are enormous and beautiful.”

Aiden paused to let Tupic translate, but he only spoke a few sentences before Clever Crow nodded for Aiden to go on. Aiden realized that Clever Crow and Silent Wolf understood
a lot more English than they could speak, and Tupic only had to translate bits of the story

“Well, the buck is disappointed that his legs are so skinny and his feet so small. He thinks he should have grand legs to match the grand antlers. Then a lion jumps out of the brush. The deer runs away and the lion chases him. As he runs across the wide-open meadow, the buck's skinny legs carry him much faster than the lion can run. But then he enters the woods and the big antlers get snagged on the tree limbs. The buck becomes stuck and the lion pounces and kills him.”

“Yes!” Tupic said. “That is a good story!”

“Well, it isn't done; there's a moral.”

“What is a moral?”

“Like a lesson. What the story teaches you.”

“It teaches many things.”

“Yes, but at the end of an Aesop fable there is always a moral. It's part of the story.”

“All right, tell your moral.” Tupic shrugged.

“Well, I don't remember the exact words,” Aiden said a bit defensively, sensing that maybe they didn't want the moral. “Usually there are exact words, like
slow and steady wins the race.
In this story the moral is that what the buck thought was his worst part actually was his best part, and the antlers that he thought were so grand caused his death.”

The three Indians had a spirited discussion for a few minutes.

“We like the story,” Tupic said approvingly. “But there are many other morals.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like when you go to the pond to drink, you must
always look out for lions,” Tupic said. “Or, why are you going to the pond alone? Where is your mate? If you have no mate to tell you that you are beautiful, maybe you are not so beautiful after all, except in your own thought.” They all laughed at this. “Or maybe it just means that your antlers grow bigger and bigger until it is the time meant for you to die.” Tupic leaned his head back and smiled up at the stars. “But that is what makes it a good story. I like your Aesop. Tell us some more.”

They liked “The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing” but dismissed “The Tortoise and the Hare” as silly, for it was only one stupid hare deciding to take a nap that let the tortoise win.

“Slow and steady doesn't ever win a real race,” Tupic protested. “But stupid always loses.”

Aiden told about the grasshopper and the ants. How all summer the ants worked hard from morning until night, storing up food for the winter, while the grasshopper just enjoyed the summer sunshine and played his fiddle. The ants warned him that if he didn't work all day he would starve, but the grasshopper was too busy enjoying the lovely summer days and his music.